Eastern Ontario records no new COVID-19 cases
Restaurants, gyms, movie theatres excited to be welcoming back patrons
Hungry customers were lined up outside John's Diner on Wellington Street on Friday when the venerable Westboro eatery opened for breakfast at 5:30 a.m.
“It's been steady all day,” said Tony Fatoum, who runs the restaurant with his father, the namesake John, and brother Paul.
“The customers are quite relieved. They're saying, `It's a good thing we're not outside anymore.' It was always too hot or too sunny, or too rainy.”
Ontario entered Step 3 of its reopening plan at a minute past midnight Friday, allowing diners to eat inside their favourite restaurants, fitness buffs to hit the gym and theatres to light up the big screen. Museums, galleries and casinos were back in business — with capacity limits — and gatherings of up to 100 allowed outdoors and up to 25 people indoors.
Meanwhile, infections continue to fall. There were no new COVID -19 infections in all of eastern Ontario — in fact Ottawa Public Health reduced its case count by one.
There were no deaths reported and there are no COVID patients in Ottawa hospitals.
Provincewide, there were 159 new cases and 10 new deaths reported, bringing the toll to 9,285 since the pandemic began.
Most of the remaining social and business restrictions could be lifted in Ontario as soon as 21 days from now. According to the province, Step 3 conditions will apply until 80 per cent of the eligible provincial population aged 12 and older has received one dose of a COVID-19 and 75 per cent have received their second, with no public health unit having less than 70 per cent of their eligible population aged 12 and over fully vaccinated.
In Ottawa as of Friday morning, 72 per cent of all eligible residents had received one shot and 52 per cent were fully vaccinated.
Under the new rules, restaurants have no restrictions on the number of customers inside provided the mandatory two-metre distancing between groups can be maintained.
At the Flora Hall brew pub in Centretown, preparations are underway to welcome indoor dining for the first time since early spring. With Step 3 starting Friday, the restaurant is combining its indoor and outdoor dining spaces to see how customers respond, according to owner Dave Longbottom.
While Flora Hall boasts a large covered outdoor dining space, Longbottom said everybody is “pretty excited about the prospect” of returning to indoor dining. “It's the freedom ... and the ability to choose — I think that's appealing to people most after such a difficult several months,” he said.
And while Longbottom is welcoming the move to Step 3, he acknowledged that the transition process and changes in rules between these reopening phases have created challenges for staff.
“This is yet another transition and people get stressed by the change because it's complicated. We've still got to enforce all of the protocols and rules required of us by Ottawa Public Health, but in yet another new configuration. I think that's where the stress comes for the staff.”
Gym owner Jeff Christison wasn't there when his customers started showing up for their workouts Friday morning. He'd been up late the night before, visiting each of his nine Anytime Fitness locations programming the automated doors to allow clients access again.
Government subsidies helped him weather the COVID -19 shutdown, when many of his clients cancelled or suspended their memberships. But he's glad the doors are open again.
“I opened the businesses to stay in business,” Christison said.
“I've seen what's happened around the globe with our company and I know that the health and wellness industry has really bounced back strong,” Christison said. “People have realized the importance of being healthy.”
Movie screens lit up again Friday for the first time.
“What a joy it is to get back to the routine of posting daily showtimes! Looking forward to seeing our patrons today after what seems like years (actually about 120 days)” the Mayfair Theatre tweeted Friday. It reopens with a screening of the documentary The Specials and a limited capacity of 95 patrons.
Heather Andrews, co-owner of Wheelhouse Cycle spin studio, said gym-goers were eager to return to the bikes on Friday, with a full house on hand for a noon-hour class — the second of four classes on the day.
“It seems like people are feeling very comfortable and are very laid back,” she said in a phone interview from the studio's location near City Centre.
While Wheelhouse has offered online classes since shortly after the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Andrews said clients have expressed to her how mentally challenging it has been to be away from the studio and its community.
“People feel hopeful that their mental health is gonna start to improve,” Andrews said. “I mean, speaking for myself, I felt like ... I felt so alive today.”